Doesn't there exist some list of officially supported platforms? I haven't been able to locate one.

Well, I guess everything is in flux right now. Hopefully Oracle makes a firm committment to OpenGL. I just cannot understand why such an important standard isn't part of core Java. Hobby projects aside, what company would use Java for game or scientific visualization developments if Java doesn't support OpenGL? Java is supposed to be platform independent for heavens sake but doesn't support the most important platform independent standard in graphics. It's so lame it's almost funny.

I'm talking about the official list of Jogl supported platforms. Version X of Jogl supports the following platforms, Y1, Y2, ... and YN. Platforms Z1, Z2, ... and ZN are not supported but are known to work. That list.

For Jogl to be credible such a list must exist. Otherwise it's a morass. You cannot depend on what people claim at forums.

Java also is in desperate need of DX10 support before it becomes even remotely interesting to real game developers.

Well, in the best of worlds both are supported but as it stands none is supported and that's stupid beyond comprehension.

At least initially I think OpenGL has priority because it's portable and an industry standard and that's more in line with how Java is positioned. Also what you can do in DirectX you can also do in OpenGL. Although DirectX dominates gaming right now there still are some OpenGL enabled games and things can change if Khronos gets their act together.

By the way I note that Sun was a "Khronos Promoting Member Company". It's all a big laugth isn't. Whatever Sun promoted with Java it definately wasn't OpenGL.

Java's had OpenGL support for over 5 years now, and as of today, has fully supported OpenGL3.2 on all main desktop J2SE platforms and architectures (thats i386, x64, PPC, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS 10.3+, and Windows 2000 onwards), through the ever-present ever-brilliant LWJGL library, which unlike JOGL, is not at the mercies or whims of corporate shenanigans.

And I'm saying that claims made by individuals aren't good enougth. To be worth anything such claims must be supported by firm evidence. In short, show me the list.

Note that Java has no official OpenGL support at the moment. OpenGL is not part of Java. There exists different non-official OpenGL initiatives though and I can live with that. But what I need is a list of what exact platforms these projects are committed to support. I haven't been able to locate any.

Without any firm commitments of what exactly is supported the OpenGL support can hardly be characterized as "brilliant". I would rather call it shaky.

I won't turn this thread into a JOGL versus LWJGL debate, you already know my opinion concerning Linux support of LWJGL.

JOGL is used by the commercial game Wakfu. As far as I know, JOGL is supported on Windows, Solaris and Linux, there are some problems with the second version on Mac but the first one (1.1.1a) works quite reliably. JOGL 2 is the only currently maintained Java binding of OpenGL-ES. It has become anew a community project like LWJGL, it has nothing to do with Sun/Oracle (therefore we are not at the mercies of any corporations unlike princec said).

As gouessej said: neither LWJGL nor JOGL are supported by Sun/Oracle, or any other company for that matter. Is a webpage with a massive table with Operating System names and ticks/checkboxes really that much worth to you? That's naive. Lots of technologies made by Sun/Oracle are officially supported, and they are bugged beyond belief (applets/webstart/awt/swing).

Ask the people that are using the bindings, and the people installing and playing the games, that's what matters.

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I just cannot understand why such an important standard isn't part of core Java.

Because Java is a platform, and there are zillion different uses, and nobody benefits if they all get included in the JRE.

Also, once your lib is in the JRE, it's virtually feature-frozen, and will have to be supported in that state, for eternity. Like we have CORBA (or AWT/Swing for that matter) in the JRE, because some moron thought that that was convenient for have it all included. Every bugfix causes regressions (not to mention new bugs!), and you cannot easily ship your own (known to work) version of a certain lib (like Swing) because there aren't any version numbers, and every vendor has it's own quirks anyway.

what company would use Java for game or scientific visualization developments if Java doesn't support OpenGL?

scientific visuaisation ? there is a little society called Nasa that do it, about others ? hum... mine ! : we produce web 3d projects and games all in Java with and without opengl (but as said above as an external librarie ==> same version for every visitor ==> no/less regression)

But what I need is a list of what exact platforms these projects are committed to support. I haven't been able to locate any.

If you download LWJGL you'll see that there are native libraries for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Solaris. Windows 95 and 98 support was dropped in version 2.0, meaning the oldest Windows version still supported is Windows 2000. The oldest Mac OS X version still supported is 10.4, but it's nearly impossible to find someone still on 10.3 anyway. For Linux I don't know because there are so many different combinations, plus the drivers are extremely unreliable. For Solaris I don't care because there are only two people using it. 64 bit Windows, Mac and Linux work ok, I don't know about 64 bit Solaris.

And yes, this list should exist somewhere in the LWJGL documentation. But like any open source project documentation is lacking.

No, this is the right forum, as there is no other forum. Most of the professional Java / graphics developers hang out here. Do you know who I am etc etc etc.

If this pleases you:

As an administrator of the LWJGL project, director of Shaven Puppy Ltd (Puppygames), moderator of JGO, and professional in the broadcast video and graphics industry, I would like to assure you that your needs are entirely met with LWJGL, and will continue to be met for as long as you support us. The project is liberally licensed under Open Source and hence cannot simply vanish, and is actively developed still and will continue to be actively developed. Anyone is free to join in development of LWJGL, and you don't necessarily have the time or skills, you are encouraged at least to donate funds to our very lean operation. LWJGL's greatest benefits are not being owned by a single corporate and not being closed source and not being supplied directly with the JRE*

LWJGLs commercial customers that I have directly supplied systems to include Associated Press Television News (live TV graphics output) and Sony Broadcast & Professional Research Labs. There are several game studios using LWJGL for commercial products. All of these depend on the continued support and success of LWJGL.

If you would like an even more thorough response please contact us at lwgl.org or PM me for a chat via email.

Cas

* I used to moan about this but in these days of modularisation I am now quite glad it's the way it is

In fact it doesn't. Don't take it personal but to me you're just anybody posting at a forum.

If you are who you claim to be you should understand my concern. I don't have the kind of insight into LWJGL that you have. So for the benefit of me and other commersial developers I suggest you use your influence to improve the LWJGL site. Would it be so darn hard to produce a list of all supported platforms? No ifs or buts or maybes, just the plain facts in writing. We at LWJGL are committed to support these platforms. Reduce the bull and increase the hard facts.

We don't take too kindly to bureaucracy. From the FAQ - we are doing this with spare time because we simply don't receive enough community support to do it full time. Not even 1% of the required support in fact, and I think this goes some way towards showing what the real demand for high performance clientside graphics is.

I do not feel the need to prove who I am to you - after all, you're a nobody on a forum too, and right now we're just a charity and my time is limited. However, there are numerous ways you can contact me officially which I have outlined that you may wish to try, which I won't be posting directly on a forum.

Argh... here we go again. UJ, do you really want to know which platforms are supported by LWJGL? Or do you just want to criticize something and attack everyone who doesn't agree? Searching finds http://www.java-gaming.org/topics/java-versus-c/12551/view.html , and according to Woogley's post there you have been banned several times from different forums, so I see no reason to not call you a troll.

Actually we know the website's a bit out of touch, nobody's gotten around to updating it nicely for ages. It could do with a bit of a revamp. We had something of a wakeup call when googling for "java opengl bindings" doesn't turn up lwjgl.org on the first page...

You should start using meta tags in the head of the html page (keywords/description) and add OpenGL to the document title. For SEO, that's probably enough. The website could use a revamp, but that takes a lot of time compared to the changes just mentioned.

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